WildFire

How Hot Is OC Spray for Self-Defense?

The hotness of any type of OC pepper spray depends on the amount of the active ingredient: oleoresin capsicum, or OC, a chemical extracted from a variety of hot peppers. The actual heat that a person might feel after getting sprayed with a dose of pepper spray can be measured in Scoville heat units, or SHU. It is the same unit used to measure the spiciness of food. For instance, a jalapeno pepper is at 5,000 SHU while a habanero pepper is at a staggering 300,000 SHU. How hot is OC spray in terms of SHU? The typical pepper spray, containing 10% OC, can register up to 2 million SHU. This is the type of heat carried by most top brands of pepper spray, but not WildFire.